Wednesday Writs: Georgia v Brailsford and the SCOTUS Jury Trial

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

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10 Responses

  1. DensityDuck says:

    [WW4] Did you ever wonder why it seems to be so hard, these days, to find jobs for teenagers? Cases like this are why. But hey, they’re protected, those kids are so god damn protected, we’ve just got the best child-labor laws in the world, yes we sure do, and you think that protecting kids is important, don’t you?Report

    • I would only qualify your statement by striking “teenagers” and substituting “14- and 15-year olds”. I would be curious to know how other McDonald’s franchisees in the state deal with the problem. Not hire 14- and 15-year olds? Put more effort into scheduling?Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    [WW1] I live in a state that, for practical purposes, is always involved in an original jurisdiction case before the Supreme Court. Colorado — “Mother of Rivers” — is signatory to nine different interstate water compacts. Times when no one is suing us and we’re suing no one over violations of the terms are pretty rare. It would be nice if these cases were subject to some sort of timely resolution requirement. Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado was filed in 2013, is on (I believe) its third special master, with discovery scheduled to end sometime this year.

    For western states, it’s an important case. Texas has asked the Court to rule on the question, “Is pumping from an aquifer hydrologically linked to a surface river a diversion from the river?” The engineering answer to that has always been, “Yes, with a multiplier greater than zero and less than one.” The legal answer has always been “No.” If the Court sides with Texas, there’s going to be a ton of additional cases filed.

    The Colorado state legislature has been ducking the same question for decades, since it would require them deciding on whether to put a large group of eastern plains Colorado farmers out of business.Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    WW6: This is right up there with not letting veterans become citizens. Here you have people who have performed public service at great personal risk, but are still not permitted to gain or regain any additional measure of citizenship, solely because politicians are not cool with it.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    Re: The Crown Act

    “No one should be penalized for the way their hair grows naturally out of their heads,” said Herod, who is a Black woman. “We should support and celebrate our diversity, our cultural diversity and we should ensure that Colorado is in place to protect folks who are being discriminated against.”

    Hairless erasure.

    WW4: I find myself hedging.

    This part:

    According to a press release by Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, Darmody allowed its employees, ages 14 and 15, to work shifts that lasted longer than three hours, or extended beyond 7 p.m. on school days. On non-school days, the franchisee allegedly allowed its workers who fit that age range to stay on the clock for more than eight hours.

    I find myself wondering if the law isn’t too narrow. Maybe the word “allowed” is prejudicing me and it really means “he threatened them with firing if they didn’t” (but Legal said “YOU CAN’T SAY THAT” and rewrote it for them).

    But it was *ONE* guy who did this at multiple locations. Which strikes me as nuts. Throw the book at him.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:

    WW3: Covid-19 is causing a lot of stress to the bar exam system. It’s almost like the end of Prohibition. California had the toughest bar exam in the United States. Many saw it as artificially tough where it was graded to fail rather than pass. The defenders of the existing system are making the same tired arguments and nobody is really buying it because they seem more sanctimonious and self-interested than anything else. Reformers are using Covid-19 to make passing the bar exam easier in California at least. I saw at least one call for the total abolishment of the bar exam across the United States as a relic from when most potential lawyers apprenticed rather than graduated from an accredited law school.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

      As a weeding-out device, does it work the way we want it to? (For some values of “we”, of course?)

      I mean, does it weed out people who shouldn’t be lawyers? The people who ought to be lawyers that take the test, does it let them through?

      I mean, California recently decided that the SAT wasn’t doing a particularly good job of measuring students. Is it that unthinkable that the bar exam is similarly not particularly good at measuring lawyers?Report